ICEM CFD Tetra/Prism For CFD++ or Fluent

Simon Pereira
ANSYS ICEM CFD
Product Manager

2007 ANSYS, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Large model Strategy

If your models are large and generating the mesh takes
time.
Break out a chunk (most difficult chunk) for optimizing setup and
settings
With only a few million cells, your turn around time will be quicker
Apply lessons learned to the larger models
Once you figure out the best settings for a class of models, you can
apply that to other models within that class.

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Geometry Setup
Prism starts with geometry
For geometry patch independence, delete unnecessary
curves and points.
Over constrained patches (too many curves) will make it
difficult for the smoother to give you a smooth mesh.
Can also set sizes on curves or density regions
Finer mesh in difficult areas gives more freedom to the smoother
Some users set width parameter on surfaces to keep the mesh size
from coarsening for a number of layers beyond the surface. This puts
more nodes in the volume and makes it easier for prism to connect up.
Dont set width to more than 2 or 3 on surfaces your plan to prism.
Yes, it will increase your Octree tetra count
It only helps with octree tetra mesh (use density regions for a more
general solution)
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Prism Preparation
It is difficult to smooth prisms, so we want to start with the best possible quality. Preparation is
the key.
Start with good tetra or tri-surface mesh
Check aspect ratios / quality
Check and fix all diagnostics
Single edges, Non-manifold vertices, or Duplicate elements will crash the prism mesher

Laplace smooth the surface tris

It may be a good idea to use one of the bottom up tetra methods (Advancing front, Tgrid, or
Delaunay) to replace your octree tetras.
You could reduce the tetra element count by 30 to 50% and you will get better mesh transitions.
Be careful
Laplace smooth the surface mesh before filling
Make sure you have no single edges, non-manifold verts, etc. which could cause trouble for the bottom up tetra
methods (and prism for similar reasons).
If you set surface width for volume refinement, it is not directly respected by the bottom up methods

Visually scan the surface mesh

Look for kinks or sharp tent-like structures in the mesh
Diagnostics may not reveal all surface discrepancies

Make sure part associations are correct

Look for a few elements in one part scattered among another part
This can sometimes happen and then when prism is generated it is tough to organize the transitions to
the surrounding tetras between scattered prism columns.
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Mesh Smoothing
Use the Laplacian based surface smoother

Laplacian smoother

rp= Avg (ri)

1
Some users like to float the tets and smooth the tris, then turn off
Laplace and freeze the tris and smooth the tets.
Other users just delete the Octree tets, smooth the tris and then fill
with a bottom up tetra method.
Laplace moves the point towards an ideal location defined as the
average of the surrounding nodes
This procedure significantly improves the mesh
Has the effect of averaging the surface mesh transitions and
triangles become more equilateral
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Tetra Fill
Octree tetra has sharp transitions and uses about 50%
more nodes on these models than Delaunay Tetra
Advancing Front, TGRID Delaunay and TGRID AFT are also
available
Advancing front methods give smoother mesh, but that
means more elements.
AFT is an advancing front option that can be set for the
TGRID mesher
My tests have shown it is roughly 6 times faster than the other
advancing front algorithm

12.1 has a Delaunay with TGLib-AFT option (best)

We recommend doing the fill before Prism
Tetras enable collision detection
Bottom up methods may be more difficult after prism
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ICEM Tetra Meshing

Delaunay

Octree

Expansion Ratio=1.2

Mix and Match

with Hexa Core or
Prism

Advancing Front

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Tetra Fill
Under global settins, you can change the growth ratio
and adjust other properties for the fill.
OCTREE Mesh

Delaunay Mesh

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Prism Requirements
The settings are determined by your
requirements.
In this case Fluent or CFD++
You require All Prisms (Few or no
Pyramids)
Can handle sharp high angles and
relatively poor quality to achieve this

You require smooth transitions

Cell to cell and between prisms and
tetras

You need to set the initial height.

Y+
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Prism Settings
Leave initial height as 0
This causes the initial height to float in order to
reduce the volume change between the last prism
and adjacent tetra.

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Pyramids due to intersection

If the height is floating, you must refine
the mesh to control the prism height and
prevent intersection from being resolved
with pyramids

Before refinement, prism

layers intersected and
pyramids were used
after refinement there is lots
of clearance (no pyramids)

Auto reduction (discussed

later) can also prevent
collision without pyramids
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Prism Settings
Min Prism quality = 0.000001
Default is 0.01; If you set this closer
to zero, prism will permit lower
quality prisms without resorting to
pyramids.
We set this low enough to get no
pyramids and CFD++ can still handle
the worst prisms.

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Prism Settings
On complex models, prism orthogonality and the
quality of the inner tri surface are at odds.
Set this below 0.5 to favor tetra quality over
orthogonality.

Ortho weight = 0.5

Ortho weight = 0.1

Ortho weight = 0.9

Poor quality tets

Directional smoothing may also
reduce orthogonality as was
necessary in this example
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Prism Settings
Fillet ratio works together with Ortho weight to
improve tetra quality in convex regions.
Larger fillet (number is a ratio to total prism height)
means more inner surface area for the tops of the
prism columns and their adjacent tetras

Fillet Ratio = 0.1

Fillet Ratio = 0.5

Fillet Ratio = 1.0

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Prism Settings
Max Prism Angle keeps the prism layers connected
around tight bends.
Set this at 180 to prevent pyramids

Max Prism Angle = 140

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Max Prism Angle = 180

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Prism Settings
Smoothing Options
Set surface smoothing steps to 0; you should
smooth before running prism
Volume/directional Smoothing is the most time
consuming part of Prism. If you turn these off, Prism
generates very quickly
Directional smoothing steps are needed for Ortho
weight to be less than 1. For complex models with
lots of tight spots, smoothing steps are important
Without Directional
smoothing steps, prisms are
very orthogonal, but they
will still bend for fillet ratio.
Directional collisions result
in pyramids
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Prism Settings
Advanced prism params, Auto Reduction
Proximity can cause prism to stop and give
pyramids instead.
This option causes the prisms to squeeze down
This is fixed with redistribute prisms (automatic at 12.1)
Pyramids

Redistributed
Reduced
(Squished) and
prisms
No Pyramids

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Redistribute Prism
Edit Mesh, Redistribute Prism
Reset the initial prism height.
Solves the squished mesh from auto reduction
Allows the user to adjust for the desired y+
Roughly maintains the smooth volume transition
Auto reduced Prisms
(Squished)
Floating initial height.
Prisms fixed
Initial height set

Before

Issues
If the initial height is large, the min ratio will be 1
(uniform) distribution.
11.0 could not redistribute layers containing
pyramids. This is fixed in 12.0
12.0 changed the way Prisms were calculated to give
the most precise column by column initial height
12.0 could not redistribute hexas (inflated quads), or
imported mesh, these have both been fixed for 12.1
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After

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Smooth Prism

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Prism is difficult to smooth which is why we try to start

with as good a surface mesh as possible.
Once the mesh is done, we recommend smoothing
with the prisms (Penta_6) frozen. This will improve the
tetra mesh. Do this until you dont see any
improvements.
Turning on the allow refinement option may help
also, but use judiciously or you may add many new
elements.
If you want to smooth some more turn on the smooth
for the Penta_6 elements, set the up to Value very
low (< 0.05) so that most of the prism mesh is left
alone.
I also recommend saving before smoothing prisms
in case you dont like the result.
From all accounts CFD++ is very robust and seems to
be able to handle19even the worst prisms.
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One Layer/Multi Layer

The one layer, multi-layer argument has gone back and forth for a long time
The one layer advantage is speed since it only needs to smooth the volume
mesh out of the way one time and doesnt do any directional
smoothing. Smoothing is the most time consuming part. The downside is that
your prisms are very simplistic and not good at capturing complex
geometry If that is all you wanted, then you may as well run prism with all
the layers, but turn the smoothing steps way down (maybe to 0).
The advantage of multiple layers is that the smoothing can help bend the
prisms around difficult areas, plus you can take advantage of a number of other
intelligent features that the developers worked hard on (floating height, fillet
ratio, etc.). The down side is that it is slow.
I usually try a middle solution. If you want 21 layers in the end, then maybe do
three layers or seven layers instead. Use the max height over base to control
the growth and then split and redistribute. We put a fair amount of
development resources on split and redistribute prisms over the 12.0 and 12.1
releases.

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Closing
These settings should minimize the number of pyramids you produce,
while allowing for a better Prism/tetra transition and control of the first cell
height.
With more discussion, we can adjust these recommendations as needed
Contact us if you have any trouble
Tetra/Prism is a quick way to get a decent estimate. For more accuracy
and solver efficiency, lets work on utilizing the hexa or multizone
methods.

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